


Necessary Ingredients

by dancingpenguin57



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic Fluff, Emperor Kylo Ren, Empress Rey, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Mild Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 04:48:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17400314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancingpenguin57/pseuds/dancingpenguin57
Summary: Rey and Ben disagree about the finer points of procreation.





	Necessary Ingredients

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ocean17](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ocean17/gifts).



> This is pure fluff to the point of being almost-crack, and exists only because I missed writing in this mini-universe. 
> 
> This takes place after chapter 40 of Ashes of the Empire, but you don't need to read that to indulge in this fluff. You just need to know:  
> 1\. After a slooow burn, Rey and Ben are married and relatively angst-free.  
> 2\. One of their wedding gifts was a pouch of herbs from Chewbacca, which he told Rey would help her to make 'strong pups'.  
> 3\. It's baby-making time.

“Maybe we should burn it,” Rey suggested.

Ben made a non-committal noise in the back of his throat.

“As an incense. Or an infusion. Or… or maybe we’re supposed to smoke it? Ben, did Chewbacca give us _drugs_?”

Ben’s only response was another apathetic grunt. Rey grit her teeth and turned to face him. He was stretched out on their bed, idly scrolling through a wall of text on his datapad, apparently completely unconcerned with her current dilemma.

“I could brew it into a tea, but then when would be the best time to drink it? Before or after?”

“Whatever you think is best,” Ben mumbled drily. His shoulders shifted and he sunk a fraction deeper into his pillow, keeping his eyes locked firmly on his screen.

Rey plonked herself down on the bed beside him, using enough force to make the mattress shudder, signifying that she had no intention of allowing him to ignore her. A quick peek at the datapad confirmed her suspicion that he was only feigning concentration: the speech he was ‘studying’ was one he had already given two weeks earlier.

“Do whatever _you_ like with it,” he reaffirmed, “and I’ll be with you in fifteen minutes. Or whenever you’re... done.”

Rey pretended not to hear him. She plucked the datapad from his hands and set it on the bedside table. “Or maybe we bake it into something. What do you know about Wookiee cuisine?”

“Not much.” The words were almost swallowed by a sigh. Ben reached out to take her wrists and guided her hands to press against his bare chest. “Rey, you and I both know _exactly_ what we need to do to conceive a child, and a handful of dried plants isn’t a necessary ingredient.”

Rey raised an eyebrow in response, and Ben, perhaps thinking that she didn’t catch his very unsubtle implication, began to guide one of her hands down his body toward an ingredient that he clearly deemed ‘necessary’.

Perhaps it was a bit mean of her to pretend to go along with it, but she couldn’t resist wriggling her fingers underneath his waistband and _almost_ stroking him before jumping up from the bed and away from him. She plucked the herb pouch from the end of the bed and moved toward the balcony, where she had left her comlink.

“You know, I think I’ll just call Chewie and ask him. _Then_ we can try it your way.” She looked back at Ben and forced a smile, hoping that a definite plan for action would finally nudge him out of his bizarre mood and get him on board.

It had the opposite effect. He sprang to his feet and lunged toward her, snatching the pouch from her hand and holding it high above his head out of her reach, as if that would somehow prevent her from making a holocall.

“No. Absolutely not. You can’t do that.”

“Ben, what-- what is _wrong_ with you? Give that back!” She wrapped both hands around the highest point she could reach and pulled ineffectually.

Ben, defying all logic, seemed to grow even taller. Rey looked down in bewilderment to see that he had risen up onto his tip-toes.

“You can’t have it until you promise not to call.” Was he _puffing out his chest_ , now? “Do whatever you want with the plants, but you can’t--”

“Are you for real? What the kriff are you--” Rey jumped up and tried to swipe at his hand, and with an added Force push it was almost enough for her to reach.

Ben twisted away. “You can’t have it back unless you swear--”

“You are being _completely ridiculous_.” Swipe.

Twist. “Tell me you won’t call and you can have it.”

“Ben--”

“Just--”

“ _Don’t_ \--”

“Go away!”

“Come here!”

Rey couldn’t pinpoint the moment that his strategy had changed, but after a moment he was pressed face-down on the floor with the pouch tucked protectively underneath him, and she was kneeling astride him and scrabbling uselessly at his shoulders. She shrieked in frustration and climbed off him. After a few more rounds of unsuccessful entreaties she slumped against the wall in defeat, and Ben decided it was safe enough to uncoil his body and pick himself up. He shifted to sit before her stiffly; the pouch held carefully in his lap, his lips pursed.

Rey took a deep breath to calm herself before speaking. Even so, the words came out high and thin. “Maybe the herb has already done its work, because it looks like I _already have a child_.”

Ben eyed her warily and said nothing, his body tense, apparently expecting a second wave of assault.

“It’s you,” she clarified after a minute’s silence. “You’re the child.”

He nodded contritely. “I got that.”

His fingers unfurled at the same moment that the tension left her shoulders.

“I don’t suppose you want to tell me why you lost your mind over the thought of me making a holocall?”

“I-- because...” Ben paused as if to collect his thoughts. He swallowed. Then, while looking at some point over Rey’s shoulder, he explained in a deep, urgent voice: “He’ll know what we’ve been doing.”

“What do you mean? What have we been doing?”

Ben gestured to himself, and then to her, and gave an odd little shrug. Rey looked between them, and then around the room, searching for some sort of clue. Her eyes landed on the bed and then flicked back to him with understanding.

A ridiculous red splotch appeared at the hollow of his throat. Rey fought the maddening urge to crawl over to him and kiss it.

“I think he knows, Ben. We’re _married_. He was _there_.” When he said nothing she continued. “It’s a matter of very public record. You’ve announced me as your wife countless times. The _entire galaxy_ knows what we’ve been doing.”

He looked appalled.

She couldn’t help giggling. “Since when are you shy about it?”

“I’m not shy,” Ben said, at the precise moment that the tips of his ears turned pink.

“That’s true. You definitely weren’t shy last night when you practically begged me to put my mouth on your--”

“That’s between the two of us!” Ben protested, cutting her off. “It has nothing to do with anyone else, especially not my _uncle_.”

He had never referred to Chewbacca that way outside of his own memories, and the word’s appearance now was a marker of how incredibly ruffled he was by the situation. Rey felt a wave of affection that washed away all of her earlier irritation. She shuffled across the floor to him, moving in staccato like a particularly inelegant crab, but when she reached his side he wrapped an arm securely around her shoulders.

“This is important,” she said, leaning into him closely so that his breath stirred the hair at the crown of her head. “I don’t have any family traditions to pass on, and I know you don’t _want_ to pass yours on, but this is different. Chewie cares about us both; he helped bring us together; and I know he’s going to love our child.” She reached down to take the pouch from his hand, and this time he didn’t hesitate to let her take it. “This gift is proof of that, and we need to honour him by using it.”

Ben sighed a sigh so deep that her own body rose and fell with his chest. “Okay.”

Her comlink was still on the balcony, but she was feeling cozy and decided that the call could wait for later. As she pressed herself more snugly into him Ben surprised her by fishing out his own comlink from a pocket and handing it to her.

“Now, really?”

She felt him nod.

She typed in Chewbacca’s access code and looked back up at Ben before confirming the transmission. His face was still stained by a faint blush. “Are you sure you want to stay for this?”

“I won’t leave you,” he said.

Rey’s heart squeezed. “I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! <3


End file.
